


In the Shadows of Eden

by signore_whorechata (The_Wayward_Orphans_101)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Eldritch Gods - Freeform, Human/Monster Romance, M/M, Magic, More characters to come, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, attempted non-con by omc, witch Arthur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 21:46:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30011397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wayward_Orphans_101/pseuds/signore_whorechata
Summary: Arthur's life was miserable inside his conservative village. He was dead named at every corner, and if that wasn't enough, Joshua, the mayor's son and resident asshole, wouldn't stop pursuing him. He wished he could escape, find a coven safe for his family and him, but he knew the chances were slim. He swore he would do anything to leave that bitter village behind, but as he landed on his ass inside an ancient temple, Arthur realized maybe that was easier than he thought.
Relationships: America/England (Hetalia), OMC/England (Hetalia)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	In the Shadows of Eden

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo this little 3-4 parter is a little gift for my lovely friend @fwoggycake over on tumblr! Please follow her, she's got mad skill!!! 
> 
> Happy birthday Em! Monster fucker fic back in action uvu
> 
> Alfred isn't any specific eldrtich god, just a mix of a lot of different things lol.

Arthur felt like his lungs were on fire. He’d been running for quite a while, his heart thundering in his chest. He felt the ache in his feet, the screaming from his thighs and the burning in his throat as he jumped over a fallen log. His body screamed for him to stop, to rest, to take a breath, but he couldn’t risk it. Not when he heard faint rustling of leaves and the bone chilling sound of twigs snapping. His eyes frantically searched the vast forest, looking, searching, _pleading_ to find any hole to hide in.

When he had woken up that morning, he never thought he would be prey.

Even with the fatigue slowly sinking its teeth into his bones, he moved on. His feet slipped on the damp moss underneath, but he righted himself before could tumble, the thoughts of sharp, bleached, teeth sinking into his neck kept the adrenaline thrumming. His heart, while elated, immediately sunk when he pushed branches aside and burst through a clearing. Finally, no more stinging lashes of whipping branches, but he’d face another thousand lashings compared to the flat _nothingness_ of the clearing before him.

A snap of a branch and muffled growls were enough to send him flying into the clearing. If his breath hadn’t been so heavy, lungs laden with the burden of keeping him _alive_ , if the all-consuming fire in his chest hadn’t been so prevalent, he would’ve laughed long and _hard_. Perhaps he would meet a fairer death in that clearing. Maybe he’d meet one of those fabled creatures the villagers would murmur about, in between their revolted sneers about witches, that would relieve him of this mess. His family would mourn, his mother would burn the village to the ground while his brother and father would snap Joshua’s tendons and rip his stupidly smug head off. A good revenge indeed.

_‘And to think, all because I said no,’_ Arthur thought, bemusedly laughing as he remembered how the entire village prattled on about Joshua’s _kindness_. About how ‘ _fantastic_ of a man he is,’ and ‘ _Oh,_ **_Elizabeth_ ** _why can’t you stop being such a stubborn mule and let the man court you already? You don’t want to be an_ **_old maid_ ** _, do you?’_. That particular last thought left an acrid taste in his throat. He couldn’t entirely blame them, not when subtle changes to his appearance already raised some hackles; coming out as transgender would’ve been more than a little stupid.

_“ELIZABETH,”_ Joshua roared as he burst through the clearing. Arthur spared no glance, knowing that any wasted time would be worse than death. He was already a quarter of the way through the tall grass field, and he held hope that Joshua would finally tire out, when the piercing howls filled the air. Arthur’s blood ran cold and his heart nearly stopped.

His feet were already screaming, he could feel the drops of blood pooling in his shoes and making his footing slip with every step. His lungs were on fire, each breath burned worse than the last, his heart was ready to stop, and he swore his legs were ready to collapse fear be damned. If he hadn’t been caught off guard, if that stupid, narcissistic, _heathen_ of a man hadn’t cornered him, alone, as he came back from harvesting his needed plants, he would’ve been able to grab his potions and solve this little issue with no problem.

Plenty of men have met worse fates playing alpha in the forest after all. 

_‘Come on, please, please, just a while more,’_ he begged his body as he pushed through. Stabbing pain raced through his feet and thundered over his body as he ran. He knew it was over. There would be no way of him getting out of this one, not with Joshua’s hounds on the chase, but he had no other choice. As he heard the snarls and snapping of jaws barrel closer, he kept at it. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he swore he could feel the faint breath of the hounds on his neck and sent out a silent prayer for his family.

_‘I’m sorry mum, dad, Alli. I should’ve been smarter,’_ he thought as he slowed down his pace. There was no point anymore, not when he was barely halfway through the clearing. Arthur wished he had taken some nightshade with him. Leaving Joshua with a dead corpse instead of a warm body would’ve been better than this. Perhaps his family could pin it on him, declare foul play and Alli could demand a trial by combat; Alli was never one to play fair after all. Arthur took one more step, and before his brain could register that Joshua’s hounds were nearly upon him, he fell.

He let out a sharp yelp as his body pitched forward, his entire body seized for a moment before his arms scrambled to latch onto anything, desperate for anything to stop him. The air in his lungs punched out of him with every tumble, as his body slammed into cold, hard, rock littered ground. He hissed when he felt a burning pain in his palm, the fear electrifying his whole body as felt something warm start to heavily ooze from his hand and that he wasn’t slowing down. His brain felt like it was being punched from every direction, and his whole body screamed in agony as he rolled over rocks. He could hear Joshua’s yells and the hounds barking, but that was muted compared to the rushing blood in his ears that nearly destroyed his ear drums. After what felt like an eternity, he finally slowed to a stop. He couldn’t bear to get up and lied there, body strewn across the bone-chilling earth. His chest ached, the padding around it helped in protecting him but it wasn’t enough to stop the blossoming pain around his creaking ribs. He felt the tell tale heat around his legs, right or left he wasn’t sure of yet, but he cursed Joshua’s entire line for ruining his only pair of pants.

“Elizabeth?! Elizabeth, are you okay!?” Joshua shouted from above, and Arthur wanted to wire his jaw shut.

_‘He has a lot of nerve to act concerned,_ ’ Arthur thought as he kept taking slow and steady deep breaths. He winced when the ache in his chest demanded that he stopped, but he needed to know if he could get up and make another escape. Not that he was particularly sure that Joshua and his hounds would be able to come down, but there was a first for everything, if today wasn’t a lesson enough.

“Hold on Elizabeth- don’t worry I’ll get you out of there!” Joshua said before scrambling away, his hounds following after. Arthur sighed, some of his fear fleeing with Joshua. Slowly, despite the screaming protest of his body, he sat up and took a closer look at his injuries. He grimaced at his bleeding and dirt covered palm and rummaged through his small bag he managed to keep on him throughout the chase. He groaned as he opened the bag and only found crushed up sprigs of forget-me-nots.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he held the precious, crumpled, flowers in his uninjured hand, “why couldn’t it have been the _other_ bag?” He looked around his pockets for any other bags that might’ve survived the chase but there was nothing but the flowers mocking him. “Oh, when I get out of here, he’s _dead_ ,” he hissed. The back of his mind taunted him as he tucked the flowers back in.

**_If_ ** _you get out. Better run before the boogeyman comes back, Arthur._

Arthur ignored his inner thoughts and pushed himself to stand, biting back a hiss as his soles prickled and stabbed at him with the added weight. He looked back up the cliff edge and whistled as he took in the steep drop. 

“Well...let’s get a move on,” he murmured to himself. He turned around and blinked, “...isn’t that interesting,” he said as he was faced with a crumbling stone temple. There was something certainly off about the building, and it made Arthur’s skin crawl as its aurora blanketed him. If Arthur had more options, he would most certainly avoid the temple at all costs, a faint memory bubbled at the back of his mind, something to do about his mother warning him about the village's history, but Arthur looked around his bleak surroundings and sighed. He walked towards it, swallowing the building dread as he walked up the cracked and moss covered steps, shuddering as he entered the dark archway of the ruined building. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, and he bemoaned the loss of his bag again, as he walked blindly around the building. 

The echoes of his steps on the stone floor churned Arthur’s stomach as he wandered around, his hands outstretched in order to prevent himself from slamming into anything. The memory of his mother talking about a temple like this burned brighter, but he still couldn’t recall the moment clearly enough. He stopped as he felt a wall and he stepped closer, desperate to know if he could see _anything_ that could clue him in on the history of this thing. He could make out faint lines, and he felt the grooves of _something_ carved into the frigid stone walls.

“Fuck...I swear, I _swear_ I’ll skin him alive once I get out of this,” Arthur growled under his breath as he kept moving, his good palm still pressed against the wall. His heart leaped into his throat when he took another step and felt something crawl over his foot, he felt himself go faint as he heard it scurry past him. Yes he’d dealt with rodents in the past, but there was something about the off way it squeaked that gave Arthur the chills. The sound was off, deeper and more grutal than the high pitched squeaks he expected. The sudden thought of the creature being something unearthly shocked him to move again, and he hurried along the unseen path before he yelped as he stumbled into a jagged pillar of some kind. His bloodied palm outstretched and grabbed onto it, and while it sent a burning pain up his arm and to his shoulder, Arthur bit down his lip until he tasted iron. There was no need to call even more attention to himself, especially if that _thing_ had... _friends_. Under his palm, he could feel that there were symbols, words, etched onto the pillar, even as his grip became slippery with the cooling blood, and he prayed to whatever god was out there that he hadn't made some terrible mistake. 

_‘There once was a village, strong and true, whose people lived among emerald fields.'_

“Fuck- fuck! Nana would boil my toes,” Arthur hissed as he quickly withdrew his palm. He hastily went to wipe away the smeared blood but a gnawing sense of dread from earlier drowned him. He desperately rubbed at it but the stone pillar was suddenly dry. 

_‘The old gods protected them with vigor and honor, as their blood was blessed.’_

Arthur held his breath as he felt the ground start to move, nothing more than a slight tremble, and Arthur fruitlessly prayed to a god he didn’t believe that it was just the freak rat causing a ruckus. His heart stopped as he was washed in a sudden amethyst light, and the soft whispers of his mothers voice, a story she had once told, shot to the front of his brain with vicious clarity. 

_‘Soon the Romans came and wiped them away, but one guardian remained. Father of magic, and patron of unions, avenger of his people. He vowed to protect the temple to his last breath,’_

The stone temple trembled and quaked, the settled dust stirring and fogging the air with a suffocating grasp, and Arthur’s chest seized as he tried to avoid breathing it in. Arthur could make out the faint engravings he felt earlier, and it seemed that the temple walls doubled in size as giant murals towered over him. A giant, ghostly white, black faced figure towered over two kneeling people, a bouquet of forget-me-nots and unknown flowers in one hand, and a staff in the other. Arthur cried out as he felt the ground shift below him and he scrambled back, tripping over the growing rubble around him and he landed on his ass.

_‘In a sea of grass, the temple lays. There he lies dormant, until a willing bride-to-be braves the journey and finds the key.’_

The stone pillar-no _altar_ \- was beginning to froth at the surface and Arthur’s face paled as he pieced everything together. 

_‘Never go near Arthur, you understand me? You’d get sick of eating frogs eyes and newt tails anyways,’ his mothers soft voice joked as she tucked a younger Arthur in bed. Arthur shifted in his sheets, huffing._

_‘Of course mama, I’m not some dumb kid.’_

Oh if only his mother could see him now. 

Sharp claw like hands shot out of the altar, slowly pushing a burning white mass up. Arthur closed his eyes, curling into a ball as he resigned himself to a worse fate. He scrunched his eyes to the point of pain as the light got closer, but instead of heat he felt like ice crawled over him, stealing his breath away. He refused to open his eyes, but he felt something positively _freezing_ ghost over his waist, shuffling about in his pockets. Before he could even think, he was pinned down flatly, and eyes were forced back open. His scream was swallowed when burning blue eyes stared deeply into his, razor sharp mouth molding over him and kissing him soundly. 

The previous pain he felt was like a drop of rain compared to an ocean. Every single fiber in his body was set aflame, it felt like dozens upon dozens of knives tore through his skin, mangling every inch of his body. Behind his eyes, deep in his ears, crawling through his skin, everything felt like it was being slowly peeled off him before being stitched right back together. He could hear something, it was muffled and faint from the sheer agony he felt, but it felt like the words curled around him and seared a brand onto his very soul. As soon as the pain appeared, it suddenly stopped and instead his body felt light as a feather as the brightness died down. Soon, coldness was replaced with warmth, and those terrifying claws turned into rugged palms caressing his tear streaked face. Arthur was eventually able to open his eyes, his sight still hazy and blurry as he tried to focus, and even though he was moments from begging for death, the sight of a handsome man looming over him made him feel oddly...safe. He tried to protest as the man tucked something in his hair, but he was startled by the strange sound his throat made. The man hushed him, leaning down he placed a soft kiss to his cheek. 

“A thousand years I’ve waited...welcome home, beloved.”


End file.
